Octatrack Effects [Mk1/Mk2]

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#74

I read thhis very often, but has this ever been officially confirmed? Just curious.

I know there were several threads about gain staging, but in practice I never ever really had to think about it. I don’t know, maybe I’m doing it intuitively.
Regarding sound degradation:
if I load a sample from from my laptop into the OT it sounds completely the same to me as on the macbook as long as timestretch is not activated.
I do the transition trick with resampling live all the time. There is no recognizable difference between the original loop and the resampled when I move the crossfader. it sounds the same to me.
Anyone who hears a significant degradation must either have timestretch activated or be really picky I reckon :wink:

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#75

off topic… But interesting video in this context

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#76

After they gave the OT trig conditions I don’t believe anything anymore. :wink:

But Olle did say there would be no significant updates to the OT.

People have to keep in mind that you have the option of 16 separate FX all modulatable and plockable, 8 of those potentially being reverb or delay. NOT one or two send FX. The fact they’re even usable, let alone pretty good in some cases, is a considerable achievement.

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#77

I actually never had any problems there, when I had lots of tracks and fx going I just lowered levels a bit and everything was fine.
I mean, who wants to find out afterwards that you have to record again because the track was clipping?!
I did some research just out of curiosity and then ran some tests.
It’s definitely possible to get a flat/dull sound out of the OT if you turn everything to 11.
Not difficult to get a good mix, though.

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#78

me neither, I just wonder if maxed out processing power is the reason for that

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#79

I’ve said before that I really dig the OT’s fx, and there’s something nice about each of them. And when you start to chain fx it becomes a whole different beast.

My only criticism of the fx is that there’s no tail (unless Amp-Vol), and that’s just something you get used to.

#80

That’s not due to the fx… track fx are inserts so it’s totally normal that when you mute the track reverb tails are muted too.

#81

If I remember correctly someone from Elektron said that even for bug fixes they have to optimize code, because there are pretty much no cpu cycles left.
Maybe I‘ll find the post later.

Btw, regarding the alleged sound degradation, an album I finished about a year ago had layered pad sounds on almost all the tracks and I didn’t have a poly hardware synth so I rendered them and loaded them into the OT.
There was absolutely no perceivable difference! None.
At first I accidentally rendered the pads with fx (modulation fx and reverb) - out of curiosity I tried some lfo pitch modulation, it sounded pretty much amazing^^ The way the layers of modulated pad sounds and the reverb kind of got smeared in a crystalline way…wow.

Delay is a send fx, reverbs can be toggled between send and inserts.
I‘d prefer if the mutes were trigger mutes and not audio mutes, so when you mute a track, it just mutes the next trig and doesn’t cut the audio off abruptly.

Possible workarounds aren’t really doing it for me. Mapping amp vol to a midi controller works great, but you lose the ability to p-lock amp vol.
Using scenes (xvol) for mutes does work, well kinda, it‘s pretty confusing to me actually^^What scene mutes which track again and which one solos the kick?
Great that it‘s possible to mute groups of tracks, though.

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#82

They’re send or insert fx.

#83

Sure. That’s the case with Arranger Mutes. They mute trigs and keep tails.
It can be used live, but you have to be in Arranger Edit mode > Mutes.

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#84

Sorry but I disagree. I rather think that the delay and reverb, when use in “send " mode” run parrallel to the track’s main signal (and eventually any insert effect, need to check that) , but as a whole it remains a track insert from my point of view. Unlike the Digi’s, or Analog4/Keys for example, that have a fx bus/track and fx are thus shared between tracks in a very conventional way. Ok, if we consider each audio track as a submixer that has 1 input, 1 or 2 aux sends (depending on settings) plus an insert and 1 or 2 fx returns, and that then all 8 submixers are summed in the main mixer, yes, from a submixer point of view delays and reverb’s are send fx. But in the end, on the OT when you mute the track or cut the level, the tails are cut off, and that was the point.

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#85

Ooh, yeah, this things shines with the drums. Very competent in that aspect. But it’s jenky with synths.

Good points. I will really have to begin loading samples instead. I believe that will get me good sound. It’d begun to prepare some tasty samples in my MPC… great with the capture, rendering and reproduction! Then I just got depressed when I tried to sample them into the Octa. Yes, they sound bad! They sound like cardboard.
When i first connected my Microfreak to the Octa, i was so disappointed i wanted to throw the freak in the garbage. It sounds workable in the MPC. So I’m running midi from 8 to control Freak with the audio in to the Live.
The Microfreak is actually a great critic piece.
Using it for the comparison is very telling.
I’ve compared the Octatrack against the MPC Live. The octatrack is quite poor. Neither is it capable of sampling the freak competent, nor are the fx able to apply the necessary processing to give a satisfactory media.

My next steps for improvement will be the addition of a couple integrated peripherals to pick up the slack so that my expectations in what I need to hear will be met.

#86

I´m using thru machines and sample synths into my OT all the time, drums from the Analog Keys, Pads from the Micromonsta, I sample my Shruthi and I also work with the transition trick and never noticed problems. Also had Nord Racks, Minilogue, Volcas and what not going into OT.

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#87

This is definitely weird. It should not be. If your samples sound like cardboard compared to the MPC, either the MPC has some fx (EQ, or other sorts of enhancements) active, or there’s a filter in the OT’s track path, or you have an issue with physical connectors (audio jacks). As I mentioned in a earlier reply, I cannot tell the difference between direct sound from my mixer and the same source once sampled in the OT and I do this all the time, sampling my mixers main stereo out in the OT than swiching to play the sample back , it’s seamless, you can’t hear any difference. I did tests using the transfer function in SMAART (professional audio analyser) and there’s a very slight roll-off (like 0.5 dB/octave starting at 10k which is neglectible). Harmonic content is perfectly transcribed, no artifacts were measured. I didn’t measure intermodulation distortion, but my trained ears tell me that is not something to worry about, especially in this context.

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#88

@Kayi, make that @avantronica’s test!

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#89

If you think the OT makes your samples bad, that is totally ok. If you feel you need more stuff to process and get the results you want, go for it. If you think the MPC makes your samples good, that’s cool too.

Each to their own.

I have a great time sampling with my octatrack. I am happy with my results. Thats what counts.

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#90

what do those three things mean? And are there some samplers which underperform on one or two of those… ‘stages’? genuine question - want to become a sampling connoisseur!

reading your post again - like the micro freak experience - it sounds like you’re saying this comparatively garbage sound can be heard even running something through the OT as mixer?

#91

I definitely noticed a small change between direct signals and signals routed through the OT when I first got mine, not a big difference but noticeable (comparable to the differencce between dithered and undithered audio) and for a while it kept me from running analog synths through the OT other than the occasional live show. But over the last year or so I’ve started to notice that the minimal, on the fly mixes I do when I’m routing everything through the OT are kind of nicer sounding than the “better” full mixes I’d do in a DAW. At this point I’ve been pretty much mixing live on the OT and/or inside fo multitimbral modules if I’m using them, and the only reason I sometimes record samples to the DAW and then transfer them over to the OT is convenience (even though it does sound modestly better, which shouldn’t be surprising because if I hadn’t gotten it a a really good used price, four channels of i/o on it would have cost as much as an entire OT MKII - if it didn’t sound better that would be a problem).

Anyway, I have no issue with recording an entire track straight from the main outs now. It sounds like an Octatrack but is that actually a problem?

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#92

This means 20kHz is attenuated by 0.5dB?

There is a degradation while sampling internally at least, you can try it out by having two recorders take turns recording and playing back each other. But saying it sounds like cardboard is just plain bullshit. I offered to present a blind test to see if anyone can tell any difference (and had no takers) but seems like it has been done already.

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#93

Great questions!

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